I Can't Stand To Fly
by RadioShack84
Summary: John’s POV during The Return, Part 1. One-shot.


Title: I Can't Stand To Fly  
Characters: John Sheppard  
Category: Gen, Angst  
Rating: G

Summary: John's POV during The Return, Part 1. One-shot.

Disclaimer: I do not own Stargate Atlantis, and I am not making any money from this story. Lyrics are from the song "Superman" by Five For Fighting. I don't own that either.

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_I can't stand to fly  
__I'm not that naïve  
__I'm just out to find  
__The better part of me_

_I'm more than a bird…I'm more than a plane  
__I'm more than some pretty face beside a train  
__It's not easy to be me_

They were being kicked out.

It felt like a slap in the face, and even though John was trying hard to see the Ancients' side of the argument, it still stung like the insult it was. He also wasn't naïve enough to think that he'd ever be coming back to Atlantis, not with his service record and all of the questionable judgment calls he'd made during his time here. He'd told Ronon that he couldn't stay in Pegasus because the Air Force had other plans for him, and he was near certain those plans involved him going back to his previous posting of playing taxi driver in Antarctica, or something even less prestigious. And that was only if he didn't get court-martialed or forced into retirement.

The trouble wasn't the lack of prestige though. He'd handled plenty of that and so was used to it. He just didn't know how he could go back to flying airplanes and helicopters after flying puddlejumpers. Granted, if he had to choose between conventional aircraft and nothing at all, it'd be conventional aircraft any day, but that wasn't the whole of it either. John didn't know if he could stand to fly away from Atlantis.

He felt as though he was leaving a part of himself behind that he'd only recently discovered. It was a part of him that was more than just a pilot, more than just the person people relied upon to operate a machine. It was the part of him that did good for entire peoples, rather than just following orders—or not following them, as had been the case often enough. He had come to Atlantis partially hoping to escape his superiors' disdain and had found something he hadn't even known he was looking for: friends, people who relied on him for things other than his ability to fly, who valued him just because he was _him_, and that was exponentially more exhilarating than the icy summer winds over Antarctica in its own right. It had been too good to last, though, and now it was at its end. Helia and the IOA were ripping it all away from him.

_Wish that I could cry  
__Fall upon my knees  
__Find a way to lie  
__About a home I'll never see_

_It may sound absurd  
__But don't be naïve  
__Even heroes have the right to bleed  
__I may be disturbed…but won't you concede  
__Even heroes have the right to dream  
__It's not easy to be me_

John Sheppard was not a man who let his emotions show easily, but he was nearly overwhelmed as Ronon and Teyla were helping him gather his things to load onto the Daedalus. If they noticed his unease they said nothing, and for that he was grateful. He wanted to break down right there, maybe even needed to, but he couldn't. It wasn't in his nature to give in to such weakness no matter how bad he was hurting inside. His time in Atlantis was over. He had to accept it and move on, knowing that all he would have soon were memories of the one true home he'd had and would likely never see again. They were memories he wouldn't even be able to share with anyone outside the SGC. For one thing, it was classified. Even if it weren't, who would believe him? Maybe he _was_ a little bit crazy, but he didn't intend to go around telling people on earth stories of a flying city to confirm it. No, he would go back like a good boy, make up tall tales of where he'd been or just flat out tell people it was classified, and maybe even follow all of the Air Force's orders this time, whatever they turned out to be, but he knew he would always long for this city, _his_ city. He had earned the right to miss Atlantis, hadn't he?

_Up, up and away…away from me  
__Well it's all right…you can all sleep sound tonight  
__I'm not crazy…or anything…_

John glanced around the gate room for a final time after bidding Teyla and Ronon farewell, and hated the bitter jealousy that coursed through him. It was over. Those words just kept playing over in his mind. He, Rodney, Elizabeth, and everyone else were being forced back to earth, while Helia, the other Ancients and _Woolsey_, of all people, were taking their place, all safe and sound. Safe, due to the endless energy and blood he and every other individual of this expedition had put forth to keep it as such for the past two and a half years. And where was he going now? Back to being just a pilot. He stepped through the gate, irony and sadness heavy on his mind, having never believed that he could ever think of flying as 'just flying'.

_I can't stand to fly  
__I'm not that naïve  
__Men weren't meant to ride  
__With clouds between their knees_

_I'm only a man in a silly red sheet  
__Digging for kryptonite on this one way street  
__Only a man in a funny red sheet  
__Looking for special things inside of me  
__Inside of me  
__Inside me  
__Yeah, inside me  
__Inside of me_

As it turned out, the Air Force did have plans for John, just not the ones he'd expected. They assigned him to the SGC, and sent him through the gate on missions with a team of his own. It felt like a consolation prize, but he wasn't exactly sure he cared. The old cliché that 'nothing would ever be the same' had never rung more true. He'd re-qualified for flight status upon his return, but since he had flown nothing but puddlejumpers in Atlantis and become accustomed to their flawless interface, the military aircraft now felt undesirably cumbersome and foreign to him.

At least at the SGC he could still go off-world, but with his non-cohesive, bickering team, he felt almost certain this would be a very short-lived assignment. Literally. Maybe that had been his superiors' plan all along: put him in the line of fire with amateurs, and let the enemy take care of their problem for them. Sheppard definitely wouldn't put something like that past the military.

Of course, he supposed even getting shot at while going on mundane missions was better than being turned into a lab rat, which had been the talk and desire of many of the scientists at the SGC. They'd wanted to study his 'special' gene, extensively from what he'd heard. He owed Carson Beckett a major debt of gratitude for keeping the hounds at bay, as it were, feeding their thirst for data with his own findings and research on the gene instead, but people still came to Sheppard almost daily wanting him to activate this or that. On some of those days, John could actually make believe that he was back in Rodney's lab in Atlantis, making mystery gadgets glow.

_I'm only a man  
__In a funny red sheet  
__I'm only a man  
__Looking for a dream_

Then there were most of the other days, when he spent endless hours between missions searching and hoping for an excuse to go back to Atlantis, right up to the day when General Landry asked him to listen in on General O'Neill's report. As it tended to go in Pegasus, things being fine quickly snowballed into things being anything but, and John saw his chance when Landry called he, Elizabeth, and Rodney in for advice. As it tended to go in the military, however, Landry squashed his hopes like a bug when the only advice he wanted was how to nuke Atlantis. Hell, even his nemesis the iratus bug would've been positively flattened under the heel of Landry's perfectly-polished, unforgiving boot of authority.

_I'm only a man  
__In a funny red sheet  
__And it's not easy, hmmm, hmmm, hmmm…_

But John was done waiting around. Over the past several weeks it had happened as he had feared: he had become just another soldier again. His friends had dispersed, with the exception of their recent meal together, and they were just as miserable as he was. Teyla and Ronon were still in Pegasus, and they were possibly doing all right, but he knew Rodney had been going crazy stuck in Area 51, and Elizabeth had been mostly unreachable. Sheppard had been feeling similarly isolated. He hadn't really bonded with his new team, and he'd typically ended up seeing so much of Carson due to injuries and mishaps with Ancient devices that he'd have felt like a nuisance if he'd bothered the doc during his off time as well. John didn't even really have the 'pilot' status anymore to make him stand out in the crowd. It was these factors combined with his worry for Atlantis that led him to know that the time had come once again to disobey his orders.

_It's not easy to be me_

As he gathered Rodney, Elizabeth, and Carson in private to discuss options, he tried all the while to think of another way around. He respected the military and the chain of command or he would not have served for as long as he had. As such, going against orders didn't sit well with him. Then again, orders that were wrong didn't sit well with him either, and a few things were simply more important, like saving his home. His friends and at least half of his team were back together again, and they agreed with him unanimously, even helped him to devise his strategy.

So it was that he instructed Elizabeth and Rodney to acquire access to the jumper, hack into the 'gate, and prepare to re-write the Pegasus macro. When access had been obtained and Rodney was ready with the 'gate, Carson had created a distraction and he stunned Wallace and the tech working on the puddlejumper, and off they went swooping through the rippling event horizon, knowing that it could very well be their last run. A quick stop to pick up Ronon and Teyla and they would be back in the thick of the Replicators in Atlantis. John knew he would possibly be killed on this mission, would certainly be court-martialed if he returned to earth. Even so, he was going home to Atlantis, one last time, to save her from the Replicators if he could, and that alone was worth everything.

* * *

THE END


End file.
